‘Everything I Know About Love’ Cast on How Female Friendships Don’t Take a ‘Backseat in the Storyline’
Four female friends share the experience of navigating post-college life in London in Peacock’s new series “Everything I Know About Love.”
Set in 2012, the show, which is based on the book of the same name by Dolly Alderton, combines humor and drama as it follows 20 somethings Maggie (Emma Appleton), Birdy (Bel Powley), Nell (Marli Siu) and Amara (Aliyah Odoffin) as they work on adulting, seek out romance, and even learn a choreographed dance or two in their shared living room.
“I think it’s just so nice to see female friendships not taking a backseat in the storyline,” Appleton told TheWrap. “It’s very much front and center. And that is the romance. And that is most important in this story.”
As things begin in the new series, Maggie is just arrived in London and still trying to figure her life out. As her housemates and friends do the same, changes in their lives take Maggie by surprise.
“I think the thing is, with Maggie, she’s always wanting to be an adult,” Appleton said. “I think she didn’t like being young and having to follow a set of rules. And moving to London with her friends, being an adult, having all this freedom is like, ‘I’ve arrived.’ But I think in the same way, it’s also quite overwhelming, and things start changing that she didn’t really expect. Birdy gets a boyfriend and that’s never happened before. So it’s an abundance of really exciting new opportunities, whilst also the reality of growing up kind of being thrown in. And yeah … she potentially thought she was more ready for that environment than she actually is.”
For Odoffin’s character Amara, she’s seeking out a career with a steady income.
“We kind of meet her in a time of her life, that like classic period of like being in your 20s, having left [university] and being like, ‘I need a stable job to kind of get me going,’ and wrestling with the idea of having to do that day to day, that kind of thing,” Odoffin explained.
Nell, played by Siu, seems to have things figured out. She’s already working as a first-year teacher, and she’s in a long-term relationship, while most of her housemates are still single.
“She’s, I think, excited and loves [her teaching] job. But you can sort of see her struggling, I think, as a lot of young teachers relate to, when you first get into teaching, how overwhelming it can be. So she’s trying to party and have fun with her friends and enjoy moving to London, but juggling this very adult job that suddenly happens to her,” Siu explained. “And she’s also in a long term relationship with Neil, who she met in uni. And throughout the series … Nell’s story sort of looks at love and long term relationships and how that progresses and how that can be hard when all your friends are at the start of early stages of love.”
“Everything I Know About Love” is streaming now on Peacock.
